Gaddafi son wants to surrender to The Hague

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son and heir apparent, Saif al-Islam, and ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi have reportedly suggested turning themselves in to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The news comes from NTC senior Libyan military official Abdel Majid Mlegta, as quoted by Reuters.

Since NTC forces took control of Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, the colonel’s son has remained in hiding. He is believed to be somewhere near Libya's southern border with Niger.

According to the NTC official, Saif al-Islam and Senussi are trying to broker a deal to surrender to the court through a neighboring country. Which country that might be, however, has not been revealed.

Mlegta claimed that they feel unsafe both in Libya and in neighboring Niger and Algeria, where some Gaddafi family members have already found refuge. In any case, he added, they said that Niger was asking for too much money for them to stay.

Saif al-Islam, like his deceased father and Senussi, is wanted for war crimes. The ICC issued arrest warrants for the three of them in June on charges of crimes against humanity, after the matter was referred to the court by the UN Security Council in February. The charges were made in connection with the Libyan regime’s violent crackdown on protesters that month.

As to what is behind Saif al-Islam’s decision, political analyst Samir Awad told RT that it is likely that “he has seen what happens to anyone linked to the Gaddafi regime or his family if they fall into the hands of rebels, who are completely disorganized and who abide by no law.”

The analyst suggested that Gaddafi’s son may have decided that instead of living as a fugitive for the rest of his life, he would rather surrender to The Hague.

Libya Infrastructure Report 2011
Business Monitor International
January 27, 2011
70 Pages - Pub ID: BMI6194451

http://www.marketresearch.com/Business-Monitor-International-v304/Libya-Infrastructure-6194451/

Libya’s construction sector is fast becoming one of the most active in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with outstanding growth recorded in 2009. Historic growth levels combined with substantial infrastructure investment plans have guided an upward revision in our growth outlook for Libya’s construction sector over the short term, with real growth of 8.5% and 7.9% expected in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

There are a number of factors driving our optimistic outlook for Libya’s construction sector:

• Construction industry real growth for 2009 was reported at 9% year-on-year (y-o-y), making it one of the best performing countries globally, despite a difficult backdrop in terms of risk aversion and reduced oil revenues. Nominal growth came in at 26% y-o-y, however, this is cause for some concern, indicating high inflation levels in the construction sector.

• Substantial investment plans have been announced for the housing and infrastructure sectors, with a US$100bn, four-year (2009-2012) investment plan currently being executed. In June 2010, this was further increased by US$52bn, meaning a considerable amount of money will be directed to the construction sector.

• A healthy budget surplus is propping up investment plans, making them easily feasible. In 2010, BMI estimates that Libya’s budget surplus was 14.7% of GDP, and will remain in the double digits in both 2011 and 2012 (11.9% and 10.3% respectively). This is enabling the government to procure large-scale and capital-intensive construction projects.

• Demand stemming from a young and increasingly rich population is putting pressure on existing infrastructure. Economic growth is also demanding improved transport networks and access to electricity, both of which are crucial if the government wants to diversify away from the hydrocarbons sector into tourism and industrial production. The government is hoping to position Libya as the gateway to Africa, meaning improved transport networks are a priority.

• The presence of a number of international construction companies gives further credence to Libya’s plans, and the timely execution of projects. Austria’s Strabag, Brazil’s Odebrecht, Egypt’s Arab Contractors and Canada’s SNC-Lavalin are just a few of the companies already active in the country, and therefore likely to benefit from further contract opportunities.

A combination of the above factors is driving our optimism for Libya’s construction sector, with 2011 and 2012 expected to present the strongest growth owing to the four year investment plan running to 2012. Beyond this, between 2013 and 2020, growth is expected to slow, although it will remain strong, with annual average real growth of 5.5%. However, there is upside potential to this as another investment plan will likely follow the current one.

Former MI5 Agent Annie Machon said in a report to the conflict in Libya: “They’ve had free education, free health, they could study abroad. When they got married they got a certain amount of money. So they were rather the envy of many other citizens of African countries. Now, of course, since NATO’s humanitarian intervention the infrastructure of their country has been bombed back to the Stone Age. They will not have the same quality of life. Women probably will not have the same degree of emancipation under any new transitional government. The national wealth is probably going to be siphoned off by Western corporations. Perhaps the standard of living in Libya might have been slightly higher than it perhaps is now in America and the UK with the recession,” she said. "What really was the UN & NATO trying to achieve?"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2797118/posts?page=52#52

GREED OVER LIBYAN SECRET TREASURE: BLUE GOLD excerpt:
Gaddafi and the Neighborly issues.

Mubarak spoke at the 1996 Great Man-Made River Inaugural ceremony and stressed the regional importance of the project. Gaddafi called on Egyptian farmers to come and work in Libya, where there are only 4 million inhabitants at the time. Egypt’s population of 55 million is crowded in narrow bands along the Nile River and delta region.

In the 1970s, Qaddafi expelled many Egyptian families from Libya, but over the recent years the two countries have become close once again. There were plans to build a railway line to facilitate the two nations travel back and forth. There was also a standing commission plans between Sudan and Libya for integrating economic activity.

But even with that 1,800 miles of giant hydrological enterprise in operation, Libya still depends on foreign markets for three-quarters of its grain. To make his desert nation self-sufficient in food, Gaddafi made some long-term deals with nearby countries to grow food for Libya.

The Western African state of Mali has become dependent on Libya for aid and investment, funding its government buildings, hotels, and other high-profile infrastructure. Thus, a secret deal was struck between Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure, and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi became the solution to enhance Libyan food security by receiving 50 years worth of undisclosed rights, paid by the Libya Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment. Libyan-controlled organization called Malibya oversees the Libyan enterprise: A canal stretching 25 miles north from the River Niger to 250,000 acres of proposed irrigated land at the edge of the marshes, to divert large amounts of Niger River water for extensive irrigation upstream. It was dug in 2010 by Chinese contractors, who are now preparing the first 15,000 acres of fields.

The scale of the project is astounding. The director general of Malibya, Abdalilah Youssef, boasted in 2008 that the canal could supply up to 4 cubic kilometers of water a year to the enterprise’s fields of rice, tomatoes, and fodder crops for cattle. The current take for all other existing irrigation projects is 2.7 cubic kilometers a year, it grabs as much as 210 cubic meters a second, potentially more than doubling the amount of water taken from the river for irrigation.

Larger than Belgium, it is Africa’s second-largest floodplain and one of its most unique wetlands. Seen from space, it is an immense smudge of green and blue on the edge of the Sahara.

http://thesantosrepublic.com/multimedia/photogallery/2011/07/Great-Man-Made-River.jpg

The Great Man-Made River of Libya.

http://thesantosrepublic.com/multimedia/photogallery/2011/07/libya4.jpg

The world’s biggest effort to reclaim deposits of fossil water is the Great Man-Made River in Libya, for which Gaddafi has spent $30 billion over the past three decades building for his people and given as a gift to the Third World without any financial or help from the USA, World Bank or IMF.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.